juliensimon/planetary-nomenclature

IAU Planetary Nomenclature

Part of the Planetary Science Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

IAU-approved named features on Moon, Mars, Venus, and Mercury -- 13,723 features across 4 planetary bodies, including craters, mountains, plains, and more from the USGS Planetary Nomenclature database. Approval dates span 1935 to 2026.

Dataset description

This dataset contains every IAU-approved named surface feature (crater, mons, planitia, vallis, etc.) on the Moon, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. The data comes from the USGS Astrogeology Science Center's Planetary Nomenclature database, which maintains the official IAU gazetteer of planetary feature names.

Each record includes the feature name, geographic coordinates (center point and bounding box), diameter, feature type, approval status, and cultural origin/ethnicity metadata.

Features per body

• MOON: 9,084 features
• MARS: 2,048 features
• VENUS: 1,985 features
• MERCURY: 606 features

Schema

Column	Type	Description
name	string	Official IAU feature name
clean_name	string	Cleaned/normalized feature name
body	string	Planetary body (MOON, MARS, VENUS, MERCURY)
approvaldt	datetime	IAU approval date
origin	string	Name origin/meaning
diameter	float64	Feature diameter in km
center_lon	float64	Center longitude (decimal degrees)
center_lat	float64	Center latitude (decimal degrees)
type	string	Feature type (Crater, Mons, Mare, Planitia, etc.)
code	string	Feature type code
approval	string	Approval status
min_lon	float64	Minimum bounding longitude
max_lon	float64	Maximum bounding longitude
min_lat	float64	Minimum bounding latitude
max_lat	float64	Maximum bounding latitude
ethnicity	string	Cultural/ethnic origin of name
continent	string	Continent associated with name origin
quad_name	string	USGS quadrangle name
quad_code	string	USGS quadrangle code
link	string	Link to USGS nomenclature page

Quick stats

• 13,723 named features across 4 bodies
• 44 distinct feature types
• 13,723 features with known diameter
• Top types: Satellite Feature (7,063), Crater, craters (4,179), Corona, coronae (341), Vallis, valles (248), Mons, montes (239)
• Approval dates: 1935--2026

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/planetary-nomenclature", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# All lunar craters
lunar_craters = df[(df["body"] == "MOON") & (df["type"] == "Crater")]

# Largest features by diameter
biggest = df.sort_values("diameter", ascending=False).head(20)

# Features by body and type
by_body_type = df.groupby(["body", "type"]).size().sort_values(ascending=False)

# Recently approved features
recent = df.sort_values("approvaldt", ascending=False).head(20)

Data source

USGS Astrogeology Science Center -- Planetary Nomenclature, maintained by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. Shapefiles updated nightly on AWS S3.

Update schedule

Static dataset (nomenclature changes are infrequent).

Related datasets

• lunar-craters-robbins -- Robbins lunar crater database
• mars-craters-robbins -- Robbins Mars crater database
• meteorite-landings -- NASA meteorite landing records
• solar-system-moons -- Natural satellites of the solar system

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.

Citation

@dataset{planetary_nomenclature,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {IAU Planetary Nomenclature},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/planetary-nomenclature},
  note = {Based on USGS Astrogeology / IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature data}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0